The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute's Infection and Immunity Research Network will be hosting its annual Early Career Researchers' (ECRs) symposium on 1 February 2023. 

This half-day event will comprise oral and poster presentations from ECRs as well as keynote talks from an invited speaker(s) who will be confirmed in due course.  

Aims of the event:

The Infection and Immunity Research Network's Early Career Researchers' event is a fantastic opportunity for Early Career Researchers to write and submit an abstract and strengthen their presentation skills to an audience of their peers. This is the perfect platform to share your work, explore alternative methodologies, ask questions if you feel one aspect of your research would benefit from wider input, offer expertise and encourage wider collaborations. This is your chance to take part in discussions that could lead to greater inter- and multidisciplinary understanding of the research in question and its potential relevance to other areas. Early-stage proposals are welcomed. 

The event is open to all; if you are not presenting, please attend and support our ECRs from across faculties to gain a better understanding of the incredible breadth of research taking place across the wider Infection and Immunity community. 

This event aims to foster the creation of new research directions but new ways of working, new ways to support and enable our academic community, and new learning experiences. 

What is an early career researcher (ECR)?

We have no set definition for an ECR; we welcome submissions from undergraduates, postgraduates, postdocs, technicians, recently appointed lecturers who are starting their academic careers, clinicians embarking on a research career, and anyone else who feels they are starting a new phase in their career journey.

Registration:

ALL staff and students across the University, in all Schools, Units and Faculties, are very welcome to participate. 

Registration is now closed. Contact Catherine Brown if you would like to join us. 

Call for abstracts:

The call for abstracts is now CLOSED. 

Confirmed speakers:

• Dr Charlotte Odendall, Sir Henry Dale Fellow, King's College London

The Odendall Laboratory studies both sides of host/bacteria interactions, in particular at the level of type I and III interferons. These cytokines are mostly studied for their antiviral properties but we find they have interesting functions in infections with enteric bacterial pathogens like Salmonella and Shigella. In addition, we are interested in identifying and characterising bacterial factors that block or manipulate interferon expression or signalling, and how these actions contribute to pathogenesis.

• Professor Susanna Dunachie, NIHR Global Research Professor in Infectious Diseases and Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology, Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford

Susie's research uses expertise in microbiology and immunology in tropical countries to address key questions that advance treatment of bacterial infection and vaccine discovery. Specific diseases of interest include melioidosis, scrub typhus, tuberculosis and COVID-19. In addition, she and her group are focusing on the role of metabolic dysfunction in impaired immunity in people with Type 2 diabetes to intracellular pathogens.

Programme:

Time	Speaker	Title
13:00	Buffet lunch
	Session 1 Chair: Ed Moran (Consultant in Infectious Disease, North Bristol NHS Trust)
13:30	Welcome
13:35	Abbie Williams (PhD student, Bristol Veterinary School)	Microbiome drift predicts metabolic differences in replicate experiments
13:50	Edward Barker (PhD student, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering)	Causal inference for precision antimicrobial prescribing
14:05	Michaela Gregorova (PhD student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine)	Impaired immune response to dengue viral infection in children and young adults with obesity
14:20	Ian Cadby (Lecturer, Bristol Veterinary School)	Mechanisms of host subversion by tick-borne Anaplasma
14.35	Charlotte Odendall (Sir Henry Dale Fellow, King's College London) N.B. presenting remotely	A (short) career at the Host Pathogen Interface
15:05	Refreshments and Poster Session
	Session 2 Chair: Rajeka Lazarus (Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust & Co-director Bristol Vaccine Centre, University of Bristol)
16:00	Irill Ishak (Postdoctoral Research Associate, Bristol Dental School)	Synergistic approach to inhibit bacterial infections on titanium medical implants
16:15	Evie Blake (MSci student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine)	A human tonsil organoid system to characterise clinically meaningful mucosal antibody responses
16:30	Joshua Howkins (Academic Clinical Fellow, Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences and Public Health Specialty Trainee, UK Health Security Agency))	Risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 on international flights, a retrospective cohort study using national surveillance data in England
16:45	Siôn Bayliss (Research Fellow, Bristol Veterinary School)	Machine learning for rapid geographical source attribution of Salmonella Enteritidis infections
17:00	Susie Dunachie (NIHR Global Research Professor in Infectious Diseases and Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology, Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford)	Developing vaccines for vulnerable populations
17:30	Close

Posters:

• Abed, Alla (PhD student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine): UBA52 protein depletion reduces the SARS-CoV-2 replication
• Alamneh, Tesfa (PhD student, Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences): Changes in the prevalence of hepatitis B and C viral infections among adults in Sindh province, Pakistan: findings from two sero-surveys in 2007 and 2019
• Aldali, Hamzah (PhD student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine): Targeting CD8 using blocking anti-CD8 antibodies as a strategy to disable autoreactive CD8+ T-cells in Type 1 diabetes
• Allen, Alexandra (Veterinary Science student, Bristol Veterinary School): Changes in keratinocyte chemoattractant (KC) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) between myxomatous mitral valve disease stages B1 and B2 in Cavalier King Charles spaniels – a pilot study
• Allen, Lara (PhD student, Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences): “Curiouser and curiouser!”: Lessons learnt from calibrating a model of the Glasgow HIV outbreak
• Bonini, Dora (PhD student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine): Regulation of the essential cell wall component lipoteichoic acid by a small membrane protein in Staphylococcus aureus
• Bueno, Irene (Lecturer in Wildlife Health & Conservation, Bristol Veterinary School): Antimicrobial resistance dynamics and antimicrobial use in wildlife rehabilitation
• Burch, Eleanor (PhD student, Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences): Using mathematical modelling to investigate the optimal SARS-CoV-2 vaccine strategy in the UK
• Eastham, Simon (PhD student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine): Assessment of the ocular micro-environment during inflammatory arthritis: a novel approach to understand co-existing arthritis and uveitis
• Etiaba, Chinelo (MScR student, School of Cellular and Molecular): Medicine Checkpoint kinase 1 regulates neutrophil extracellular traps through post translational nuclear modifications
• Gibbs, Willem (PhD student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine): Targeting CHK1 to regulate neutrophil extracellular trap release in fungal infections
• Khan, Saher Aijaz (PhD student, Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences): Differences between sexual risk behaviours and HIV care utilization between cisgender and transgender men who have sex with men (MSM): findings from Integrated Biobehavioural Surveys in Ukraine 2013 – 2018
• Kwiatkowska, Rachel PhD student, Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences Age-specific case definitions for lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI)? An analysis of symptoms among hospital admissions with LRTI
• Liu, Xiayi (PhD student, Bristol Dental School): Type-1 fimbriae modulates physical killing induced by nanoflake-coated titanium
• Mulhearn, Ben (NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Rheumatology, Bristol Medical School: Translational Health Sciences): Excess giant cell arteritis cases are associated with peaks in COVID-19 prevalence
• Oliveira, Sofia (Senior Research Associate, School of Chemistry): Dynamical nonequilibrium simulations to investigate regulation effects in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
• Palk, Nathan (PhD student, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine): A novel virulence factor, TcaA, mediates re-modelling of the cell wall during Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia
• Stanton, Elliot (PhD student, Bristol Veterinary School): Metrics Matter: How we report dairy antibiotic usage influences trends and farm benchmarking
• Swift, Hugo (Placement student / technician, Bristol Medical School: Translational Health Sciences): Tetraspanin-7 autoantibodies are present in more than half of children at diagnosis of type 1 diabetes
• Tooke, Catherine (Research Associate, School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine): Structure, kinetics and simulation reveal how antibiotics are inactivated within Klebsiella pneumoniae

Partners:

We grateful to the following for supporting this event:

Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research - Nurturing Research. Improving Health. 

The Company of Biologists - who awarded us a small meeting grant to bring our two keynotes in

Bristol Population Health Science Institute

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